How brand marketers can adapt to travelers’ evolving mindsets

When exploring digital advertising, how people watch, listen, read and shop online has become more fluid in recent years, with ongoing channel fragmentation. Fortunately, no matter how niche customers’ interests, there are ways to adapt to changing tastes and behaviors. With smarter tools and data-driven insights, businesses stand to develop advertising strategies that deliver results.

It's particularly important for travel brands to adapt, as they are not simply selling their services and products—they are curating experiences. Travel brands and advertisers need to be aware that inspiration can strike anywhere and anytime, including that singular spark that inspires travelers to start planning a vacation. But a major obstacle for travel marketers today is knowing how to reach consumers across a growing number of channels.

The landscape of travel planning has transformed in recent years. Today's travelers are discovering inspiration through an expanding universe of digital touchpoints and content creators, making their journey from dreaming to booking more complex than ever before. This evolution is evident in how U.S. travelers now spend nearly nine hours immersing themselves in travel content and research before making their final decision, according to a study by Expedia.

This shift in planning behavior reflects a broader change in how people approach travel itself. Americans are embracing travel with renewed enthusiasm, with an average of 3.2 leisure trips per year according to Phocuswright. This behavior is particularly strong among younger travelers: a recent survey study by Amazon Ads revealed that customers who purchased travel products on Amazon are 1.5x more likely to have two trips planned in the next six months. Additionally, 63% of Amazon shoppers stated travel intent in next six months as “likely” or “very likely.”

The appetite for travel continues to grow, despite rising costs and changing budgets. There's a sense of excitement, with 77% of global leisure travelers eager to explore the world. This optimism is especially strong in the U.S., where travelers are planning to both spend more and travel more frequently in the coming year than they have in the past five years, according to tourism marketing agency MMGY.

However, this enthusiasm is tempered by practical considerations. While overall travel budgets have increased, younger travelers, particularly those in Gen Z (born between 1995 and 2012), are becoming more strategic in their spending. They're finding creative ways to maximize their travel experiences while keeping their budgets in check, with most maintaining spending levels similar to or slightly above their 2024 levels.

On top of this, differing habits—such as the pursuit of authentic, meaningful experiences—are on the rise, upping the requirement to cater to new tastes. To navigate these challenges, travel brands need to refine their marketing strategies and adopt modern advertising solutions. For example, artificial intelligence-powered tools can help brands develop a deep understanding of audiences and then help them to optimize visibility at the right time in the right places. This, coupled with full-funnel marketing approach to stay in-step with consumers until final booking, influencer partnerships for authentic, real-time engagement and more, can help strengthen performance.

Redefining travel in an era of economic complexity

As these brands adapt to consumers’ shifting desires, they must also contend with the broader landscape of economic changes, which can greatly influence travel decisions.

Redefining travel in an era of economic complexity, inflation and rising travel costs are weighing on decisions worldwide. According to an Accenture survey, more than half of consumers (54%) are feeling unusually high levels of uncertainty—a sentiment that has doubled in the past year.

Growing numbers, however, are willing to extend their budgets to travel even as affordability concerns rise, the MMGY survey found. While consumers navigating increasing costs and changing personal budgets, travel continues to be perceived as a priority investment. 

As a result, with travelers navigating these challenges, they are more likely to book through indirect channels versus brand-direct as they weigh options that best work for them. Online travel agencies (OTAs) and metasearch websites, for example, collect and aggregate deals from many sources so users can rapidly assess different options and easily compare prices before going on to purchase.

With this abundance of interactions between consumers and online content, brands need to find the tools to help increase visibility in these diverse touchpoints at the right time.

Price sensitivity and its influences 

As travelers seek more value from their spending, they increasingly choose closer-to-home travel, particularly across the U.S. market, where they prefer domestic city breaks and beach vacations.

There are other ways to beat the budget: Travelers are heading away off-season and increasingly opting for budget or midscale hotels. As a result, travel companies will need to reassess the timings of their campaigns or rethink the types of product offerings being promoted in the face of shifting habits.

The prioritization of experiences

In addition to a rise in popularity for domestic travel, global travel is holding steady, with 77% of respondents in an American Express Global Travel Trends report revealing they plan to take more or the same number of international trips compared to last year. 

But how people are traveling is changing, and preferences continue to evolve as they become more financially savvy. In Europe, holiday packages are declining as travelers build bespoke itineraries that reflect their own values, according to new Phocuswright research.

And there is a rise in demand for meaningful experiences, Booking.com also revealed in its 2025 Travel Predictions report. From baby boomers taking on thrill-seeking adventures to men prioritizing mental wellbeing on men-only retreats, travel is becoming more about self-discovery and deep connections.

Many hospitality brands are embracing this diversification, including Marriott, which acquired Postcard Cabins in response to “guest demand for alternative accommodations in nature-forward destinations.”

The net result is that travel and hospitality professionals face a challenge: Consumers are more selective, seeking more variety and uniqueness; they are cost-conscious in the face of economic change in the world but ready to stretch budgets for new destinations and life-enhancing adventures.

The task is for travel brands to connect the right content with travelers at the right moment, from first spark of inspiration to final booking.

Ways to reach today’s travel consumers 

One way to get a clear picture of the effectiveness of a brand's marketing efforts is by adopting a full-funnel marketing approach. This method recognizes that consumers’ journeys have become much more complex—the Expedia research found travelers view an average of 141 pages of travel content in the 45 days prior to booking a trip.

Leveraging a range of tools can drive awareness and action at each stage of these complex journeys, and Amazon Ads offers a combination of solutions that help travel companies reach new audiences at the right time, thanks to trillions of shopping, streaming and browsing signals.

Learning from data 

As an example of how businesses can shape connections, Amazon DSP (demand-side platform) allows brands to programmatically buy ads to reach new and existing audiences, wherever they spend time. It uses exclusive insights and shopping signals to connect with the most relevant audiences, putting the brand in new places, whether that is an ad during a podcast on Amazon Music or a radio station streamed through an Amazon Alexa-enabled device. For example, signals show that Prime Video customers spend more on domestic trips, being 1.4x more likely to have spent over $10,000 on domestic vacations in the last 12 months than non-Prime Video customers. Valuable insights like these can help shape relevant connections with audiences.

Emirates, for example, engaged digitally savvy travelers using Amazon DSP to successfully promote its economy class offering across streaming TV, digital and audio advertisements.

With Amazon Marketing Cloud (AMC), brands can easily perform analytics and build audiences with pseudonymized Amazon Ads signals as well as their own inputs. By using custom insights and AMC generated audiences to optimize campaign tactics, they can clearly track what works across various channels and optimize to strengthen impact.

From ad placements on Prime Video during family movie night to remarketed messaging while listening to a favorite album, travel sellers can be present with consumers whether they’re researching, seeking inspiration or ready to book.

Advertising in the era of authenticity

One of the biggest evolutions in recent years is the ongoing shift in experts and influencers stepping in as the main source of inspiration in customers’ journeys. According to Phocuswright’s Evolving Customer Journeys Transform Travel Marketing report, travel and hospitality companies are increasingly harnessing local expertise and community powered storytelling to make an impact.

“Creators have taken the world of social commerce by storm, and travel is no exception,” states Phocuswright's report, The Creator Effect: Harnessing the Power of Collaboration in Travel. Whether choosing to take advice from a creator whose posts feel more down-to-earth or those who are “more dreamy,” its survey found most users (74%) crave authenticity.

Travel brands are taking note. Expedia recently launched a “trip matching” tool allowing travelers to build an itinerary based on Instagram Reels and then book it directly.

Amazon Ads today facilitates these types of essential connections between travel companies and highly engaged audiences. For example, brands can build influencer partnerships on global livestreaming platform Twitch.

As well as gaming, Twitch features a range of other topics, from lifestyle and fitness to art and music. IRL (or “In Real Life”) ranks among the most popular channels. Every day, an average of 35 million users—nearly 70% of whom are between the ages 18 and 34, the next-generation audience of Gen Z adults and younger millennials—tune in.

Tapping into shared passions and vibrant communities opens the door to a range of use cases: a hotel working with a well-known Twitch streamer to offer live walk-throughs of rooms to showcase a property in ways many other digital platforms cannot replicate; an influencer tasting local street food in Bangkok; an adventure tour operator teaming up with a thrill-seeking content creator during a daring paraglide or zipline experience; or a tourism board collaborating with a local Japanese celebrity chef showcasing their culinary secrets to a hyper-engaged audience.

The value for the audience includes authentic, real-time reactions that help build community.

Curated messaging, everywhere

Today's travelers seek value, authenticity and experiences that break the mold—from point of inspiration while streaming their favorite show to searching for the perfect vacation outfit, there are countless digital touchpoints for brands to stay in-step with their customers.

And with just half of travelers having a specific destination in mind when researching their vacation, there is still plenty of opportunity to inspire travelers whose paths cross an ever-expanding digital world. With 63% of Amazon shoppers rating the probability of traveling in the next three to six months as “likely” or “very likely”—your customers are already gearing up to explore.

Amazon Ads solutions and insights-driven tools help travel companies across all sectors connect with customers no matter where they are. Whether they're watching, listening, reading or shopping, they will be ready for the moment that inspiration strikes.